thy will be done

It is that time of the year when the beauty of my surroundings magnifies significantly.  Yes, Autumn is my favorite season in Tokyo, but more significantly: my Japanese visa is up for renewal next month. 

Lately, my Japan-related-snarkiness bas been all but extinguished, to be replaced by a nervous gratitude: I love my life in Tokyo and I don't want to leave!

Although all my documents are in order and I am a total upstanding citizen this year, especially compared to all the other times I successfully got my visa renewed (freak accidents, really) I find myself more anxious than I've ever been that something might go awry in this process. 

I am even more nervous than I was last year at this time, when I was only pretending to have a job, when immigration authorities had every reason to expel me from Japan for good, and when truthfully, the Rising Sun would have been better off for my absence.

So it would just be my luck, I think to myself, to get kicked out now that I am a useful citizen.  I have jobs that I love: teaching kids, translating cartoons, and making a fool of myself on Japanese television among them.   I love the AA community here, even though I am not likely to stop being a subject of controversy within it any time soon.  I love blogging about Japanese culture, and taking photographs of both the bizarre and the beautiful.

To put it simply, I have more to lose now.

I have a life here in Tokyo now, a real life, which is a far cry from the imitation of existence that I somehow maintained while drinking in Ginza hostess bars.  I have strong friendships and a stable relationship.  For the first time in my Real Life or otherwise, another person's life will be directly affected if my application for visa renewal is not approved.  I am speaking of course of my fiance, the cardboard coin craftsman wonderboy T.

In the event that I get kicked out of Japan, we are likely to stay somewhere in Asia.  But everything is in order to stay here, I keep trying to convince myself, I am a good citizen now.  And yet, god forbid anyone at the immigration bureau thinks to google me.  I worry about such things as my book and this blog.  I am not one for keeping my misadventures to myself, after all.

And speaking of god, if I were her, I would be really annoyed by my tendency to pray almost exclusively in times of desperation.  Just moments ago I was shamelessly praying just for a renewed visa, most desperately, when it occurred to me that something was off.  I was taking the wrong approach.  After all, I am supposed to be praying for god's will, that the will of a Loving God (of my own understanding) be done.

And so I pray for god's will.  I do this over and over and over again.  Yet I must admit, at times I can't help but slip subtle reminders into my prayers, regarding all the good services I could potentially do for my current community, should I be allowed to remain here.

Comments

[VicariousRising]

I'll add my prayers for your visa too. I think it's good for me for you to be there and blogging what you do.

It was really great reading this post about how good you feel about your place in life right now. Makes me love and believe in sobriety just that much more.